I just saw on the Facebook page "Unfair Advantage Racing, in memory of Mark Donohue" that racing engineer and author Paul Van Valkenburgh has died. A quick internet search comes up with very little, except that he was 83 and died on June 23 of this year.
I never met him, but got a copy of his book Race Car Engineering and Mechanics when I was just starting out in racing, and tho perhaps dated now is still a very good read. My copy is pretty well worn. He also wrote Chevrolet = Racing which is a classic. He worked with Mark and Penske developing many interesting things and was coauthor of Marks book 'The Unfair Advantage', an all time great book.
He had been away from the automotive world for some time.
Bob
PS, here is the posting on FB that his brother John wrote-he gave permission to repost this here.
"Some of you may know of my brother, Garner Paul Van Valkenburgh, who recently passed away. He built his first classic ’23 T roadster hot rod while still in high school in Topeka, Kansas in the late 1950s. After engineering school he talked his way into an engineering job at Chevrolet Research and Development in the 1960’s. As a result of Chevy’s relationships with Roger Penske, Jim Hall at Chaparral, Smoky Yunick and others, Paul was connected with all sorts of vehicles and people in high-level racing in the late 60s and on through the 70’s. These connections were detailed in his authoritative book, “Chevrolet = Racing”. He became friends with champion driver Mark Donohue and was asked by Mark to co-write Mark’s autobiography, “The Unfair Advantage”. He worked on various Chaparral cars including the prototype of the 2J “sucker car” while at Chevy R&D and on loan to Chaparral in Midland. Paul also was a well-known automotive journalist, serving as technical editor of Sports Car Graphic and going on to write hundreds of articles for all the major automotive magazines. Using vehicle test equipment that he personally built and developed he did most of the road tests for Road and Track and many other magazines in the 1980s and beyond. He published “Race Car Engineering and Mechanics”, still considered a classic on the subject. He was also a talented driver, privately campaigning his home-built ’68 Camaro in the TransAm series against factory teams and world-famous drivers. On one occasion, he qualified Peter Revson’s TramsAm car for Penske when Revson couldn’t make it to the track in time. As a consultant, he worked on government and private vehicle dynamics studies, testing everything from snowmobiles to schoolbuses. He spent time building Human Powered Vehicles that at one time held world records in his class. He eventually moved away from the vehicle world and devoted later years to the study of migraine propagation in the brain, the problem of tinnitus and his three sons.
We had a lifetime of adventures together and through him I was lucky enough to meet many automotive legends. Paul passed away on June 23ndat the age of 83, but it could be said that he lived a full life."
Edited by Bikr7549, 10 August 2024 - 03:24.
